Norm
Coleman’s pending
legal challenges notwithstanding, it looks like this is actually gonna
happen: Al Franken has staged his comeback, an has been declared
the victor in the Minnesota Senate race. Now seat
him! Hurry, before the Wall Street Journal’s conspiracy-mongering
and Dick Morris’s dark
mutterings queer the deal! (Because everyone listens to what Dick Morris
has to say these days, right?)
Anyway, Josh
Marshall over at Talking Points
Memo posted this
clip yesterday of Franken, back sometime in what looks like the early
Reagan administration, doing a bang-on Mick Jagger impersonation, with his then
comedy partner Tom Davis aping Keef Richards.
It’s
incredible. But before the looneys on the right pillory soon-to-be-Senator Franken for
dancing around and imitating a leotard-clad limey (as
if they didn’t have enough to bitch about already), here are four other
clips which demonstrate the North Star Stater’s indefatigable patriotism.
* Franken
and Davis on Letterman in ’87, in which the pair show off their national pride
— Davis proffering his imitation of Franken’s soon-to-be colleague, Senator
Daniel Inouye, hawking Macadamia nuts; and Franken (impressively!) drawing a freehand
map of the lower 48 in less than two minutes.
* The 1980 Grateful
Dead Trivia Quiz offers an alternate view of presidential history. (“Q: Who
dosed Jack Kennedy? A: TUNE IN
TO FIND OUT!”)
* Franken,
interviewed by the Bay State’s own Robert Bird — co-star of the must-see 1999 documentary,
and soon-to-be
MTV series, How’s Your News? — at
the 2004 DNC in Boston.
* A Franken-co-penned
sketch from the just-past election season. “I’m John McCain, and I approve this
message.”
Alas, one
sketch I could not find anywhere online is the best one: “Final Days,” Franken
and Davis’s
classic from SNL’s first season — allegedly written while both were on LSD — in
which Richard Nixon (Dan Aykoyd) and Henry Kissinger (John Belushi) experience
a long, dark night of the soul in the White House portrait gallery. Here's the transcript.
President Richard Nixon: And you!
Franklin Delano Roosenfelt. You were a Jew, too, weren't you? Jewboy! Jewboy! [turns to portrait of
Lincoln] What
is happening to me, Abe? Everything's falling apart, Why me, Abe? Why me?!
[the lips on Lincoln's
portrait move]
Voice of Lincoln: Because you're such a dip.